What Rational Choice Explains

Abstract

Rational choice theories have been falsified by experimental tests of economic behavior and have not been supported by analyses of behavior in the market. Politics is an even less fertile field of application for rational choice theories because politics deals with ends as well as means, thus preventing ends‐means rationality; voters have partisan loyalties often “fixed” in adolescence; political benefits have no common unit of measurement; “rational ignorance” inhibits rational choices; and there is no market‐like feedback to facilitate learning. Research comparing public and private efficiency does not support rational choice. Ironically, while law and business schools are now employing better microeconomic theories, political scientists are taking up rational choice theory, regardless of the disconfirming evidence.